


Deep Cover

by Bouzingo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Spy Intrigue, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4357541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/pseuds/Bouzingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jasper wonders how he got here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep Cover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plinys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/gifts).



“Do you understand what you’re asking me to do?” Jasper says nervously. He looks down at his shoes, shined because he’d foolishly thought he was getting promoted, not punished. “It’s… perverse.”

“I’m asking you to complete a mission, like any other,” Fury says. He’s been here as long as Jasper can remember, inspiring utmost respect and confidence. Jasper always thought he was straightforward. He remembers now that they’re all spies.

“I’ve never gone undercover.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll mess up. I’ll tell someone.”

“You’ll complete the mission. Agent. I expect nothing less, in fact.”

Jasper suppose those are as good marching orders as any. That night, he starts his files on a small memory stick he keeps on his person at all times. Two weeks later, he’s a HYDRA agent working within SHIELD. Story’s more common than he thought. Dutifully he keeps notes on his new friend, Rumlow, Rollins, and the rest. He learns about the Winter Soldier, tries not to think about how much the listless weapon they keep in bank vaults looks like the picture of Bucky Barnes in his high school textbook.

High school was when things were simpler. Jasper was a straight-A student, wanted to be one of the good guys. He was recruited into the military, which flipped him over to SHIELD. Which has flipped him over to HYDRA.

Nights are sleepless lately. He can’t come to terms with how deep the corruption goes, how twisted up with it he is. Jasper thinks about when he was a high school student, when he didn’t truly understand the concept of sacrifice.

Rumlow and STRIKE have invited him to drink on more than one occasion. Jasper declines, feels a little sick when Captain Rogers goes with them, oblivious. He feels like eating or drinking with the double agents will make him like them, like a foundling in the fairy kingdom.

He starts to write in a little moleskine notebook that on first glance looks like a food and calorie diary- in fact, only a few people know the convoluted code that turns ‘vegetarian ceviche- 155’ into a vital date.

Jasper meets senators and other politicians, who transfigure his life into a trite and horrible bootstraps narrative when they introduce him to their friends. Not all of them are HYDRA, to his morbid disappointment, but many of them are. But his job is vital, and the politicians turn into vegetables and guilty desserts in his food diary.

“What are you working on there, buddy?” Rumlow asks one day after work. Jasper bites the inside of his mouth. He despises Rumlow especially.

“Just writing what I ate today,” he says. “I’ve been trying to watch what I eat.”

And the notebook is out of his hands, while Rumlow flips through, eyebrow raised skeptically.

“I never even see you eat, Sitwell,” he says with a laugh while Jasper’s hand clenches at his side. “Lot of this looks fancy… you like avocadoes, huh?”

“They’re a healthy fat,” Jasper says. Rumlow looks at him for a long time, and Jasper figures they’re playing a game of serious or joking, though his hardwired paranoia is making itself known.

“Whatever, man,” he says, throwing the notebook back. “I don’t care what I eat. I could die tomorrow.”

Jasper knows this is bullshit, knows Rumlow has the same bullshit attitude towards his body that he has about the rest of the world. Order through pain. God. What a pretentious asshole.

“Here’s everything,” Jasper says to the mirror, trying to pretend his reflection is as scary as Nick Fury can be. “Everything I found out. I can’t do this any more. This isn’t what I joined SHIELD for. Every night when I go to bed I think about…”

Jasper pauses and sits down on his bed. At last he’s realized that he can’t tell anyone anything until he knows how deep this goes.

Like Hill, like Wu and Simmons and everyone his age in SHIELD, his high school was visited by Peggy Carter, who functioned as a living history book. She inspired everyone, and Jasper has always felt sentimental about SHIELD as a whole because of the pride Peggy Carter put in her work.

She would be so disappointed with what it’s become.

“I don’t see you anymore,” Hill says to Sitwell one day that’s been occupied almost entirely by filing papers. “You should come for drinks with me and Sharon and Romanov tonight. We’ve missed you.”

This is the one night Jasper’s promised the STRIKE team that he would go with them.

“I don’t think I can tonight.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Maria says, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure,” Jasper says, biting the lie.

* * *

 

Maria’s on cleanup after everything happens. Sitwell… Jasper’s body didn’t have very much on it, just his wallet, his phone, and a small notebook she vaguely remembers him using. She flips through it; caloric information, though apparently Jasper was winging it for the most part because the calories are totally wrong for the foods and portions listed.

“I’ll need that,” Nick says, holding out a hand.

“It’s just his diet book,” Maria mutters. “I didn’t even know he was…”

Then it all comes together, because Nick is looking at her and she realizes that they’ve lost Jasper, and they lost someone who was loyal to the end.

“Why didn’t he tell anyone? Why didn’t he tell me?” she asks.

“Because,” Nick says, “because I told him not to.”

“And this is all information that… that would have come out?” Maria asks.

“Nobody could have known that it went this deep,” Nick says. “The only ones who did were HYDRA. And Jasper, who was deep cover.”

Maria has lost so many friends because they turned out to be double agents, triple agents she’d cut all ties because she thought they’d turned, people who are dead now. Losing someone so profoundly else just hurts. She needs to sit down.

“When does it end?” she mutters. “How long does this have to go on for?”

“No longer than it has to,” Fury promises, pockets Jasper’s book. “No longer than that.”


End file.
